‘Frozen’ best on screen, not here

Plan B. That’s what this winter became, a season of Plan Bs. Delayed. Postponed. Rescheduled. Cancelled.

Had plans for that three-day weekend? Plan B. Family vacations? Plan B. Oh, you don’t have a Plan B? You must be new here.

Community events. Government meetings. Religious services. School days. Concerts. See ya. Bye. Maybe later. Maybe never. Break out the soup and telecommute.

Twice now my kid’s class was all set to go on a field trip. Twice now I planned to be one of the parent volunteers. Twice now the weather has meant postponement. Twice my family made cookies for an event at school, with the rescheduled date almost cancelled, too. It wasn’t, thankfully, because there was just rain. We’ve gotten a little jumpy with the weather lately, but the rain was really just rain. Cold rain. Not freezing rain. “Wintry mix” sounds like a fun snowflake party, but it’s not. It is the precursor to cancellations.

And really, that’s fine. It’s fine to be cautious. Officials made the right call each day, whether the weather had arrived or was only imminent. You don’t want a school bus full of children to be stranded somewhere, or worse, in an accident. We all saw what happened in Atlanta, when students and teachers spent the night at school while their parents were immobilized on the roads.

One of the recent icy days – pick a day, any day -- it looked fine out the newsroom window so I didn’t worry about driving home in what appeared to be rain. When I got to the parking lot, my car was coated in a sheet of ice. Chip, chip, chip away at the ice. Halfway through, I just let my tired arm drop by my side, dangling the darn scraper. I don’t want to do this anymore, I thought. I stood there for a beat. I finished chipping and scraping and brushing off the frozen remnants. I drove home slowly. Winter was the winner.

I love the Oscar-winning song “Let It Go” from the Disney movie “Frozen.” I have the soundtrack and I sing it loud in the car. There’s a line where Elsa (in the film, and Idina Menzel in real life) says, “The cold never bothered me anyway.” When I sing along to that line, I cringe a little. The cold certainly does bother me anyway. We live in North Carolina, not North Dakota (where, incidentally, I was born).

To quote William Shakespeare: “Now is the winter of our discontent.” I’m discontented with this winter. I’ll bet you are, too. Discontent is such a mild emotion. It’s not like we live in Chicago. It can always be worse. But we can still mutter about it. The saying about March being “in like a lion, out like a lamb” has certainly started off to be proven true in 2014. Time for that lamb part. Baaa.

Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan may be reached at dvaughan@heraldsun.com or 919-419-6563. Follow on Twitter: @dawnbvaughan.